


Zephyr (This Perfect Weather)

by luninosity



Category: British Actor RPF, X-Men RPF, X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, Love, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Romantic Fluff, Shyness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-07
Updated: 2014-10-07
Packaged: 2018-02-20 07:36:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2420447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If anyone’d asked Michael, five minutes after he’d first met James McAvoy, to describe that pint-sized Scottish-mischief whirlwind in one word, that word would emphatically <i>not</i> have been<i> shy.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Zephyr (This Perfect Weather)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [significantowl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/significantowl/gifts).



> Belated birthday-present for one of the loveliest people I know! 
> 
> Title and opening lines courtesy of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “The Zephyr Song,” because we were talking about it and also because nostalgia.
> 
> This is very loosely the fault of the recent James McAvoy-Jessica Chastain interview in which Jessica told the story about normally-talkative James getting bashful around Sam Rockwell…

 

  
_fly away on my zephyr_   
_I feel it more than ever_   
_and in this perfect weather_   
_we’ll find a place together…_

  
  
If anyone’d asked Michael, five minutes after he’d first met James McAvoy, to describe that pint-sized Scottish-mischief whirlwind in one word, that word would emphatically _not_ have been _shy_.  
  
Enchanting, perhaps. Trouble. Kind. Sneaky. Sheer pixie-height _fun_. Generous. Thoughtful. Delightfully unembarrassedly ready to snicker at the barest hint of innuendo—and James could _certainly_ find an innuendo in the phrase _barest hint_ — or to buy BB guns and start an on-set prank war. Definitely empathetic, too, in the list. Ready to hug or smile for or cry on behalf of other people. Beautiful.  
  
Michael can come up with so many words, and often does, half-unconsciously, gazing at the sleeping bit of freckled compassion in their bed, or glancing over at blue eyes between takes on a film set and watching them light up and sparkle right back. _Beloved_ is in there also these days, and of all the words that Michael might choose for himself, _fortunate_ would be the corollary. Fortunate, unbelievably brilliantly so. James loves him back. Out of the whole wide world, James loves him.  
  
This fact does not mean that they know everything about each other. Which he’s currently learning all over again. Astonishedly.  
  
James is presently blushing an impressive amount. The third person in the conversation—Sam Rockwell, who happens to be James’s fellow-celebrity crush, not in the sense of lust but in terms of admiration—smiles at him encouragingly. James gets even more pink-eared and manages to say nothing except what’s possibly a “hi.”  
  
Michael stares at him for a second, and then says to Sam, who after all has been gracious enough to come over their way and say hello when waved at from across a New York City street, “We love your work, y’know, I mean, _Moon,_ that was brilliant, James wouldn’t shut up about you for days.”  
  
James, wide-eyed and plainly giving up on words, nods. Sam grins. “Thanks, and same to you. The places you went with _Shame_ …oh, and James, _Atonement_ , man, I cried.”  
  
James now looks likely to either panic or pass out. Michael puts an arm around him, and confides, “He normally talks more than this. I’m not the sort of good with words one. James, help me out here.”  
  
“Oh God,” James says.  
  
“I saw _Filth,_ ” Sam invites. “Kind of jealous. Kind of amazed. That was damn impressive. Disturbing, but impressive. I’d love to talk to you about that, the way you pulled those emotions out, sometime.”  
  
“…okay?” James sounds shell-shocked. Stunned bagpipe-players in that accent. Hit over the head with a giant log of friendliness and mutual esteem.  
  
“Here, you can have my number, and we can talk. Maybe do a thing. Could be fun, doing a thing together. Both of you, even. Romantic comedy?” Sam throws a megawatt smirk Michael’s way. “Romantic comedy with us both wanting James? I’ll even be nice and let you win.”  
  
“Sounds perfect,” Michael says, attempting to surreptitiously nudge James with a foot. His other half seems to be petrified.  
  
“Romantic comedy with _aliens_ ,” Sam muses, “I’ll give you a call, then, and I’ll see you around,” and then pulls out his phone and wanders off, presumably to call a script person and make extraterrestrial gay love triangles happen.  
  
Michael tries poking the unnaturally muted Scottish pixie again. “James?”  
  
James, staring at the empty patch of air where Sam’d just been, says weakly, “Help?”  
  
“What _was_ that?”  
  
“I don’t…I’m not…did that seriously just happen?” The dismay in sapphire eyes would be comical, except Michael’s never seen James voluntarily not talk, so instead he’s kind of worried. “Did we…agree to…aliens…”  
  
“Aliens plus a romantic comedy,” Michael assists, and James drops his face into his hands. “Oh, fuck me.”  
  
“I’ve never seen you be scared to talk to someone.”  
  
“I’m not scared, I just—I don’t know!” James runs a hand through his hair. Glares, less angry than defensive about rufflement. “If it’s important, okay, if it matters, I can’t—when it’s important I can’t just say the stupid fuckin’ whatever’s in my head that I say all the time, it has to be—I can’t just _talk,_ y’know?”  
  
“I…think so?” He’s still processing the heretofore unknown detail that is James’s undeniable shyness when confronted with idols. When it’s important, James had said. When it matters. “He likes you, though. Everyone likes you. Come on, you know that, the whole universe adores you. Even that tree over there.” The tree waves leafy branches at them in concurrence.  
  
“I just said fuck,” James mourns. “What if I’d said fuck in front of Sam Rockwell?”  
  
“But you didn’t.” A small part of him wants to laugh. The rest wants to take James home and bundle him into giant blankets and feed him tea and chocolate-chip scones. “You’re fine. We’re fine. Sam’s got a minor obsession with aliens, which is also fine, whatever makes him happy. You have to be on the Daily Show set in two hours; we should probably eat something first…”  
  
“Oh fuck,” James repeats, now staring at the tree. “I don’t know, I think it’s criticizing my vocabulary. My life choices. Did you tell him I normally talk more? Does he hate me? Does he think I hate him? I don’t hate him. If we have pizza for dinner, can we send him a pizza?”  
  
“I…really don’t think that’ll work…you have his mobile number, not his address…”  
  
“Oh God.”  
  
“Want pineapple on the pizza?”  
  
“Very yes.” James takes his hand as they start walking. Sighs. “Sorry.”  
  
“Don’t be.” Michael squeezes those freckled fingertips. Adores them with all his heart. “I don’t mind talking for you once in a while. Kind of a surprise, but no apologizing, okay? I think I like being your knight in, um, conversational armor.”  
  
“Not your fuckin’ damsel in distress,” James grumbles, but his shoulders’ve relaxed, and his thumb rubs gently over the back of Michael’s hand. Bagpipe players and loch-waters back to undistressed calmness. Acceptance in the hills. “Thanks.”  
  
“You might look good in a tiara,” Michael says, “I can see it,” and steers them toward a pizza place he’s heard good things about, red-brick ovens and classic New York style. James grins and tosses back, “Something blue and sparkly, right? Classy, though, I’d be a stylish princess,” and Michael kisses him in the doorway through the beckoning scents of molten cheese and baking dough and heat, and knows that everything’s spectacularly okay.  
  
  
When they go out on the next press round, promotion for individual upcoming films, they go together in order to start spreading awareness of the next X-Men installment. This is not any kind of hardship, particularly not when James starts singing Freddie Mercury at him in interviews—“Kinda like it, this crazy little thing called love!”—and Michael cracks up and then joins in and _then_ sings it back to him afterwards while peeling both their shirts off, as they trip over each other and fall into bed. James laughs, pulling him down into a kiss. Michael feels like laughing everywhere, inside and out, kissing James.  
  
One of the interviewers teases them during an off-camera break about being attached at the hip, working together so often, having moved in together, and so on. She asks half-jokingly when they’re planning to get married; Michael, expecting James to laugh along, retorts playfully, “Whenever he decides to make an honest man out of me.”  
  
James grins. Doesn’t say anything for a pair of too-belated heartbeats, and then, “Oh, I see how it is, you’re waiting for me to ask? So I do the cooking, and the laundry, and I have to propose?”  
  
“I make you drinks,” Michael says.  
  
“Yeah, I guess I’ll keep you around.” James’s fingers find his and twine their hearts together. “Anyway, you do also cook. We both like to.”  
  
“It’s true about the laundry,” Michael tells the interviewer, leaning closer to James, loving the way James leans in too. “I’d just buy new shirts every week. Awful.”  
  
“He was still living out of boxes from the last time he moved,” James says. “When we moved in together, he just brought them along.”  
  
“And then you unpacked for me.”  
  
“Not a euphemism. We swear. Not this time, anyway.”  
  
“Well, no, if you think about it, it could mean—”  
  
The poor interviewer’s saved by the end of the break. She seems to be caught between laughter and horror. Michael feels a bit bad, but not bad enough to refrain from holding James’s hand below the angle of the camera lens. James enjoys being touched. And Michael enjoys touching him.  
  
Because everyone in this and no doubt every other galaxy by now knows James is a Star Trek geek and feels the need to tease him about it, the woman asks him to do a Captain Picard impression. James laughs and ducks his head and protests, “No, I can’t, you can’t ask, that’s a massive thing for me, I’ll cry, it’s too big,” and the interviewer laughs and the camera crew laughs and everyone watching the clip later’ll laugh, as James means them to.  
  
Michael, watching blue eyes, understands that every word is true.  
  
  
Back at home, he leans over the back of the sofa with a spiced-rum-and-chocolate-liquor-and-nutmeg creation; James looks up from the historical-drama potential-project script of the day and smiles, taking the glass, taking a sip. Licking lips, chasing spice and sugar with his tongue.  
  
Michael, feeling the sudden crackle of excitement bloom and race under his skin, in the pit of his stomach, lower, says, “Want to, um—?” and James nods, eyes shining. The want’s as tangible as the next inhale, as the whisper of fingertips over tingling skin.  
  
He holds James against him after, his cock softening and slipping inside James’s body, James a heavy contented weight sprawled out on top. Michael kisses his ear; James murmurs wordless affection and traces a lopsided heart over Michael’s chest. Michael finds himself thinking about other moments, earlier moments. About the interview and the answer. About James flushed and speechless, and when that speechlessness happens. About the way that James had, in the first splendid ebbing of orgasm, made a sound between laughter and a sob and tucked his face into Michael’s neck, not looking, not looking up.  
  
He strokes a hand along James’s back, idly, in love. Planes of sturdy muscle and cinnamon fireworks and a sheen of sweat. James kisses his neck.  
  
Michael puts the other arm around him too, and breathes in the apple-bright scent of dark hair as it tickles his nose.  
  
  
They go for a walk later on, in the gathering dusk. Twilight like moth-wings and fairy-lace. Violets and greys and the twinkling jewel-lights of bookshop windows and pubs coming to life. London in all her nighttime fancy-dress glory. James fits neatly under Michael’s arm, and slips his own arm around Michael’s waist, matching their steps. Despite the overall adorable shortness, James has long enthusiastic legs, and so this works. Forever will.  
  
They wander around a quiet grassy park—James stops to feed wayward ducks, producing slices of home-baked bread from nowhere at all, and Michael’s heart flips over for no real reason at the sight—and buy ice creams from a random shop because James can’t resist Cornetto temptation. James licks sweetness off his lips and then shivers; Michael says, “Yes, well, that happens when you buy things with ice in the name, and I mean especially _you,_ ” and puts his own scarf around James’s neck, atop the already-present woolly one plus shirt and undershirt and jumper _and_ leather jacket.  
  
James looks up a little guiltily. There’s ice cream at the corner of his mouth, and he says, “Yeah, but you’ll keep me warm, because you love me,” and bumps his shoulder into Michael’s on the next step. His eyes’re blue like stars, and they say all the other words too.  
  
“I do, and, um, if you want,” Michael says, taking his hand, kissing his fingers—James laughs, rich and merry as tartan in the evening sky—and then putting the arm back around him. Body heat, shared willingly. “If you ever want to…if there’s a question you want to ask and won’t…I mean, I know you’re completely the bashful retiring type and all…”  
  
James laughs again, though there’s wistfulness nibbling at the sound. Michael adds, “I just want you to know that if you were thinking that, I’m thinking it too, and I can ask if you want, I’ve thought about it, or you can, I know you like surprising me, so really, um, either way, and no rush, I’m not expecting—but if you were wanting to know, if it helps, it’d be a yes. It’s always a yes to you.”  
  
James tips his head against Michael’s shoulder and lets their eyes meet, slow and sweet and private. “Right. If I said, right now, will you marry me…”  
  
“You didn’t hear me? Yes.”  
  
James stops walking. Michael stops as well, so they end up face to face on an uncrowded pale-pavement primrose-hung sidewalk. Outside a café, under a streetlamp as it flickers on. With Michael’s scarf around James’s neck and the flavors of cool wintry vanilla and crisp crunchy cone on his tongue, the way that James will taste when Michael kisses him and licks the ice cream from his mouth.  
  
“Always yes,” Michael tells him again, and James smiles like the beginning of everything and says, “Guess I’m asking, then, and, you know, I’m not scared at all.”


End file.
